The General Secretary of The Church of Pentecost, Apostle Alexander Nana Yaw Kumi-Larbi, says the church’s agenda of possessing the nations for Christ could be realised within the shortest possible time if an effective follow-up ministry or system is put in place by all the local assemblies.
Addressing participants of the ongoing Evangelism Conference (EVACON 2021), organised by the Evangelism Ministry Directorate at the Kaneshie Central Assembly auditorium yesterday, Apostle Kumi-Larbi stated that Follow-up is the best way to bring the biblical principle of multiplication back into the church.
He defined follow-up as the process of gaining an audience with individuals that had already been won to Christ, and training and bringing them to a place of mature fellowship with Christ and service in the church.
The General Secretary also noted that the follow-up ministry aims to integrate new converts into the church, keep them enlisted, build them up spiritually, and teach them to win others to Christ.
According to him, due to the lack of follow-up and discipleship process, most souls won are lost again to the world, whilst a lot of church members also seem ignorant of the basic doctrines of the Church.
“This is why there are many lukewarm and backslidden members on the church’s register,” he lamented.
He believes that by adopting a more effective follow-up system, the church could multiply its numbers and facilitate the vision of possessing the nations, stressing that, without ‘follow-up’, spiritual multiplication will not happen.
Throwing more light on the concept of ‘Spiritual Multiplication,’ Apostle Kumi-Larbi said the concept basically involves four stages – evangelising (teaching others to receive the gospel), following up on converts (teaching them to observe all the commands of Christ), reproducing (training new Christians to begin to teach others) and multiplying (mature converts now making disciples who would, in turn, teach others)
Apostle Kumi-Larbi further noted that unlike spiritual addition, which only involves leading people to Christ, spiritual multiplication involves leading people to Christ, then developing them until they are leading others to Christ.
He said by employing both the spiritual addition and spiritual multiplication approaches, the Church would witness unprecedented growth across the globe.
“Suppose you develop just one truly ‘multiplying Christian’ each and if each year those ‘multiplying Christians’ develop one more ‘multiplying Christian’, in two years, there would be four, in five years, there would be 32, in ten years, there would be 1,024, in twenty years, there would be 1,048,576 and in thirty-three years, there would be 8,589,934,592 disciples,” he revealed.
He, however, added: “If you simply baptised 1,000 souls a year, in thirty-three years, there will only be 33,000 and not all will become ‘multiplying Christians.’“
The General Secretary, therefore, called on church leaders to put in place new converts classes in their respective churches and put experienced leaders or teachers in charge to teach the converts sound Biblical doctrines and also offer good them counsel and support them in prayer as they deal with initial challenges in their Christian journey.
He also urged them to establish follow-up teams with mature Christians as leaders and ensure that the leaders supervise the visitation and work of the team.
Apostle Kumi-Larbi, however, noted that effective follow-up demands much time and commitment to meet the holistic needs of the Christian converts.
He also added that follow-ups should be undertaken with the goal of assisting the new Christian to be filled with all the fullness of God, to be rooted and grounded in love; united in the local church, and to, in turn, reach out to others and disciple them for Christ.
The Evangelism Conference (EVACON) is a biennial event organised by the Evangelism Ministry of The Church of Pentecost to equip Evangelism Ministry Leaders at the various levels of the church in discharging their mandate effectively. This year’s event is under the theme: “A Revived Church in an Aggressive Evangelism and Informed Intercession” (Ezekiel 37:1-10).
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